Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Justice Bernette Joshua Johnson, who has served as an
Associate Justice on the Louisiana Supreme Court for nearly two decades,
is poised to assume the office of Chief Justice in February 1, 2013,
upon the retirement of the current chief justice.

She
follows in an unjustly short line of African American jurists to serve
on the state’s highest court: Justice Jesse Stone was appointed to
briefly serve in 1979. Justice Revius Ortique was elected to a seat on
the Louisiana Supreme Court in 1992.

First elected to
the state’s highest court in 1994, Justice Johnson is the second longest
serving judge currently on the bench. In accordance with the Louisiana
constitution, Justice Johnson is the justice next in line for the office
of Chief Justice upon the retirement of the current Chief. Though the
state constitution is clear, a controversy is being hatched where none
should exist.

Catherine D. Kimball, the retiring Chief
Justice, has called for a hearing to determine who will succeed her. She
has also issued an order recusing Justice Johnson from sitting on the
panel who will determine how the matter will be settled.

“I’m
at a loss as to the basis of Justice Kimball’s order,” said Ron Wilson,
one of the lawyers who successfully sued the state of Louisiana in 1986
for Voting Rights Act violations related to the state’s method of
selecting Supreme Court justices. “The constitution says who the chief
justice will be, not the state Supreme Court.”

"Any
effort to deny Justice Johnson the right to serve as Chief Justice is
clearly an affront to the Voting Rights Act,” said Marc H. Morial,
executive director of the National Urban League and a plaintiff in the
original law suit.

This issue has its roots in a consent
decree that the state of Louisiana signed after losing Chisom v. Roemer
in the U.S. Supreme Court in 1991. In that case, Ronald Chisom and
other plaintiffs successfully argued that Louisiana’s system of electing
Supreme Court judges effectively ensured that black voters would never
be able to elect a black justice to the court.

Five of
the state’s seven Supreme Court justices were elected from single-member
districts. But New Orleans was combined with several surrounding
parishes from which the two remaining justices were elected. Based on
data from the 1980 census, expert demographer Cedric Floyd concluded
that the population of New Orleans was large enough to justify that the
city elect its own justice. Yet, by gerrymandering a large two-member
district, the state diluted black voter strength and all but insured
that the voters of New Orleans, a large majority of whom were black,
would never be able to elect a state Supreme Court justice of their
choosing.

“New Orleans by itself was the same size as
the five single member districts. New Orleans could have constituted a
district by itself,” Wilson said. “We argued that the way things were
constructed, there was no way a minority person could ever get elected.”

“Black
folks were a majority in Orleans Parish, but when you combined them
with Jefferson, St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes, they were only 30
percent, and that’s a dilution of black voter strength,” said Ernest
Jones, a civil rights attorney familiar with the case. “So a lawsuit was
filed in federal court saying that that method was unconstitutional and
should therefore be done away with.”

After the U.S.
Supreme Court ruled in Chisom’s favor, the state and the plaintiffs
entered into a consent decree that would provide the most expedient way
to give New Orleans voters a chance to elect their own member of the
Louisiana Supreme Court. Rather than wait six years until the term ended
for one of the sitting justices elected from the multi-member district
or change the state constitution, a long and arduous process, it was
decided that New Orleans voters would elect a member to a newly-created
seat on the state 4th Circuit Court of Appeals.

It was
clearly understood from the beginning that the judge would never sit on
the 4th Circuit. Rather, as provided for in Louisiana Revised Statute
13:314.4, she or he would “be immediately assigned to the Louisiana
Supreme Court.” Moreover, the statute states, “While assigned to the
supreme court, the judge shall participate and share equally in the
cases and duties of the justices of the supreme court during the period
of the assignment. Further, the judge shall receive the same
compensation, benefits, expenses, and emoluments of office as are now or
as may hereafter be provided by law for justices of the Louisiana
supreme court.”

Cedric Floyd, who now serves as a member
of the Jefferson Parish School Board, said that the Louisiana Supreme
Court itself has always treated Justice Johnson as if she were second in
seniority only to Justice Kimball.

“When someone other
than a Supreme Court justice sits on a case, that is noted in the
record. But they don’t note that in any cases reported out of the
Supreme Court when Justice Ortique or Justice Johnson sat from 1992 to
2000.”

This case has broad national implications. It was in
Chisom v. Roemer that the U.S Supreme Court established the principle
that the Voting Rights Act applied to the election of judges. A denial
of Justice Johnson’s right to assume the helm of the Louisiana Supreme
Court would have the effect of chipping away at the gains embodied in
that Supreme Court decision. Chisom v. Roemer has been discussed by
legal scholars in more than 500 law review articles, journals, and
magazines. It has been cited more than 250 times by the United States
Supreme Court and other federal courts throughout the country.

"Generations
struggled for equal voting rights in Louisiana and the rest of the US,”
said Bill Quigley, an attorney who has been working on this case since
the beginning. “African American voters elected Justice Johnson to sit
on the Louisiana Supreme Court after the US Supreme Court ruled in this
case that the Voting Rights Act applied to the Louisiana Supreme Court.
It took over 150 years for Louisiana to allow an African American
Supreme Court Justice. We have come too far to allow anyone to turn the
clock back now."

“The consent decree gave us relief
moving forward from 1992, but it did nothing about all of those cases
that were decided in the decades before black voters had an effective
voice,” said Lolis Edward Elie, a veteran civil rights lawyer. “We
accepted that compromise. For the court to now circumvent the U.S.
Supreme Court ruling and the consent decree undermines any sense of
justice.”

Justice Johnson enjoys tremendous support in
the New Orleans community where she is admired as a jurist and
recognized for her fairness and concern. Before serving on the Louisiana
Supreme Court, Justice Johnson, Justice Johnson was a Judge of Civil
District Court for ten years. She is a graduate of Spelman College and
was the first African American woman to graduate from the Law School at
Louisiana State University. Earlier in her legal career Justice Johnson
served as managing attorney of the New Orleans Legal Assistance
Corporation, where she represented the interests of over 3000 working
poor and moderate income families in the New Orleans area.

Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Stand with Dignity Commemorated Juneteenth by delivering a proclamation to New Orleans City Council and
Mayor.

"The 20 people who arrived at City Hall today with Stand
were there to deliver a message to our city that we are going to
continue fighting for full and fair employment until we see the changes
that we need to see in our communities." Said Alfred Marshall,
Organizer of Stand with Dignity.

Representatives of all City
Councilpersons and the Mayors office accepted the proclamation which
calls for real career ladders in the Post-Katrina Reconstruction. The
group challenged city officials:

"We challenge you to work with
us to fundamentally shift New Orleans’ dependency on the penal system to
a system of opportunities for our community which will prevent the
driving forces behind crime. We challenge you to use the mass
reconstruction of New Orleans to finally shift from a system of slavery
and oppression to a system which drives toward full and fair employment.
We will all be free when we can be safe to live in our communities- to
us safety is not just freedom from physical violence, but freedom from
the violence of homelessness, poverty, mass incarceration that divides
families, and the freedom that comes when you know you are doing what is
right for you, your family, and your community."

"We are
here to make sure that our elected officials understand that when we are
locked out of work that not only hurts us and our families but it hurts
our communities. I understand that the Mayor is trying to take steps
to deal with violence in our community- my message to Mayor Landrieu is
you should work with what you got, right now what you got is a lot of
construction work here- don't throw good money after bad, just make sure
you get the most out of what you have to work with." said Chase Smith
who was there with his young daughter.

Fifteen Citizen Monitors trained to engage oil industry and
government representatives will be on hand at today’s oil lease auction.
The goal of the newly formed Oil Monitoring Group is to remind those
bidding that they have legal obligations to protect the Gulf of Mexico.
“We are reminding them that the Gulf of Mexico belongs to all of us,”
said Anne Rolfes, Founding Director of the Louisiana Bucket Brigade. “We
want to make sure that both the oil industry – which has a terrible
accident problem – and the government responsible for protecting us know
that they are being watched.”

Today is the official launch of
the newly formed Oil Monitoring Group, a coalition of civil society
organizations and citizens trained to engage with oil industry
representatives and remind them both of their legal obligations and the
fact that the resources they are using are public ones. “Our mission is
to prevent oil industry accidents,” said Kristen Evans, who is
spearheading the group. The group will continue to monitor oil industry
events after today’s auction.

Trained Citizen Monitors will
initiate conversations with those in attendance today’s. The event is
auctioning off 38 million acres. While other sales have happened since
the BP Disaster, this is the first in the Central Planning Area of the
Gulf of Mexico, which is off the coast of Louisiana. The Bureau of
Ocean, Energy and Management is coordinating the auction.

Election
observers, Human Rights Watch, and the United Nations High Commissioner
for Refugees are among the groups serving as a model for the newly
formed group. “We realize that all too often civil society is not in the
room when industry and government make decisions,” said Anne Rolfes,
Founding Director of the Louisiana Bucket Brigade and participant in the
group.

The monitors will wear khaki vests labeled Oil
Monitoring Group on the back, with buttons on the front that say Citizen
Monitor. They will provide brochures to those in attendance to remind
them of the laws and that people are watching.

The
Louisiana Bucket Brigade is an environmental health and justice
organization supporting neighborhoods’ use of grassroots action to
create informed, sustainable communities free from industrial pollution.

Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Tuesday,
June 19, marked Juneteenth, the commemoration of the end of formalized
slavery in the United States. The date coincides with the last wave of
notification of the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, reaching
enslaved people in Texas more than two years after the document was
initially signed, and its prominence across the US is often connected to
the 1968 Poor People’s March on Washington, DC. Recognizing Juneteenth
provides us with an opportunity to reflect on Black people’s history in
the United States, on forced labor and confinement, and on the
deliberate disorganization, dispersal, and death of African peoples
through the slave trade. It also seems impossible to consider
Juneteenth without reflecting on the rise of the prison industrial
complex, as well as Black peoples’ undying resistance to oppression and
fights for liberation.

From the emergence of modern policing
from enforcement of slave laws and codes, to the ratification of the
13th Amendment to the Constitution, to convict lease, to COINTELPRO, to
the war on drugs, Black people have been the target of systemic
exploitation, criminalization, dispossession, disenfranchisement,
militarization, and brutalization in the US. The lasting legacies of
slavery are present in every aspect of our modern punishment system. As
recently as four years ago, reports indicated that one in 15 Black
adults was in jail or prison. The number soared to one in nine for
Black men ages 20-34. From Sean Bell to Oscar Grant, III, to Trayvon
Martin, African Americans are consistently in the crosshairs of formal
and informal policing apparatuses, understood as innately suspicious and
dangerous. In charting centuries of this violence, it is not extreme to
perceive a war on Black peoples in the United States.

While the
legacies of slavery are still felt acutely, Juneteenth also provides us
with an opportunity to remember that oppression breeds resistance. We
recall the Stono Rebellion or the St. John the Baptist Parish rebellion in Louisiana—during which enslaved people organized resistance and rose
up to take their freedom. We recall The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the National Negro Congress, the 1199 Health Care Workers'
Union, and the League of Revolutionary Black Workers—in which Black
workers led dogged struggle against poor working conditions and racism
in the workplace, and for the dignity of their labor and their right to
organize. We recall, the UNIA-ACL, SNCC, CORE, and other civil rights
organizations—through which millions of Black people mobilized to expose
the inhumanity of white supremacy and to fight for the most basic
rights in the US. We recall the Deacons for Defense, the Black Armed
Guard, and the Monroe Chapter of the NAACP through which people armed
themselves and protected their communities from racist attacks. We
recall the Revolutionary Action Movement, the Black Panther Party for Self Defense, and the Black Liberation Army through which the
imaginations and legacies of militant self-determination in the US, were
linked in spirit and practice to worldwide revolutionary struggles
against imperialism. We recall organizations from the National Association of Colored Women to the Combahee River Collective in which
Black women and queer people built deeper understandings of oppression,
and liberation. We recall the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, the Black Arts Movement, and the Black Artists Guild
in which the radical creativity of Black peoples blossomed and
established new art forms and stretched our imaginations and hopes.
These examples only scratch the surface of the vast landscape of
organizations, rebellions, and communities that make up the collective
struggles, histories, and traditions of Black freedom struggle that
continue to push us forward.

For many people Juneteenth is also
an occasion to reconnect with family—both given and made. It is an
occasion to share food and stories. For Critical Resistance, we also see
it as an opportunity to imagine how we might continue to break the grip
of the prison industrial complex through our work against the violence of policing, against the expansion of jails of imprisonment, against government attempts to neutralize our struggles for self-determination.
We celebrate Juneteenth as an opportunity to forge stronger alliances
across movements and communities to eventually rid ourselves of all the
vestiges of slavery—and the build the new world carried in the hearts of
our predecessors into future generations.

Monday, June 11, 2012

With the fire at Women With A Vision now two weeks behind us, I wanted to reach out to each of you to thank you for your support. Your donations, your efforts to publicize the arson through your networks, your sassy fundraisers, and your concern have brought us through the immediate post-fire crisis and clean out. We begin this week at our temporary office space at First Grace United Methodist Church truly humbled. And our work continues...

To keep all of you updated on our rebuilding process and search for a new home, we have launched the WWAV After the Fire blog, which features a letter from our intern, Shaun King, on his first day with us – the day of the office clean out – and several updates, like the launch of our new micro-enterprise program for women in street-based economies. We will also be disseminating future updates through our Facebook Page. Add us if you haven't already!

In the coming weeks, we will be setting up a
building fund to ensure that we find a new home and are fully
operational by the end of 2012. I will be in touch with more details on
that soon.

Sometimes
Truth whispers conspiratorially; other times it gets naked in public.
This was one of those times. On May 31, Truth painted an undeniably
clear picture on the front page of section B of the Times Picayune.
The article headlined “Frame by Frame” is a mini-feature on an event the day before at which
four youth from the Gulf South Photography Project (GSPP), from 11 to 21
years of age, produced and delivered nearly 400 individual and family
photographic portraits of the homeless at the Harry Tompson Rebuild
Center on Gravier Street. The article is inspiring, showing young people
making a meaningful impact and GSPP founder Jim Belfon immersed in his
twin passions; photography and sharing his craft.

But the
placement of the article is, in itself, intriguing. It’s framed on the
top, left and right, by three news stories about homicides in which the
victims and alleged assailants are young Black men. So the GSPP feature
is framed in the context of what can happen to and for our youth. In
other words, “Frame by Frame” is framed by its frame.

We get the
picture: crime is rampant and hope is a luxury. But amidst the bad
news, we find solutions in artful ways to empower young people and those
who jump to the task. Jim Belfon is on a mission to give New Orleans
youth a “Choice Of Weapons” (to quote the autobiography of his mentor,
legendary photographer Gordon Parks). Belfon's Gulf South Photography Project arms youth with shooting skills and points them towards artistic
fulfillment, as they identify careers within the communications
industry as their primary targets.

To learn more about GSPP's
programs and activities, as well as how to support their work, call Jim Belfon at 504 579 4346 or email: jbelfonpch@aol.com.

Saturday, June 2, 2012

On Tuesday, I returned home after ten days travel. I use my time away from the office and New Orleans to recharge, re-energize and refocus on my life and my work.

I called Cynthia Wiggins, CEO of Guste Homes Wednesday morning to confirm our first Friday of the month Mobile Market and learned of the shooting on Tuesday outside the building. The woman who died in the car, from two gunshots to the head, was the daughter of a Guste resident. She told me that a five-year old girl also died.

Last night we continued our African American Women: Breaking Silence series of speakers with Terry Mogilles, RN, a mental health provider and executive director of Positive Living Treatment Center. Terry’s co-presenter, Brandon Williams, was a young African American man, a first for our series. He presented on racial disparity while those of us in the room realized that he is an outlier, an African American male under 35, and holder of an advanced degree in public health who works in IT at Ochsner Hospital and volunteers at a mental health transitional housing facility.

During the question and answer period, our conversation turned to the recent shootings in Central City and the publication of photos in the Times Picayune, the one of a 5-year-old girl in particular.

I believe that there is a psychological impact on every New Orleanian who watches the local news, sees these photos, witnesses violent death, and continues to live and breathe in this City. Black people, all people bleed red and everyone in this City is suffering.

I did not want to see the child lying on the ground as Vera Warren had described her last night. But I did. I was not prepared to see the photos of the car, including a close up of the auto interior; its driver’s side airbag covered with the blood of a woman I did not know who had just visited her mother, a resident whom I have yet to meet, from a community the Renaissance Project serves at Guste Homes.

I did not digest the news well or at all.

As an organization, are we supposed to stop providing our food pantry and fresh markets at Guste? Can we live, individually and collectively, in conscious fear of driving through the City and stop providing services to the poor? Is it time to throw in the towel and close shop?

And the previous week our presenter and videographer Ashley Jones learned while setting up the projector that her home had been burglarized for the second time in less than ten days. Vera Warren, owner of Community Book Center, asked me to consider the potential connection between our Racial Healing presentations and recent acts of theft and arson. The incidents are correlated with and connected to the relationships we have established as participants in the Breaking Silence project. We know the intimate details of each others lives.

Residents, who simply like to socialize, will be restricted from congregating outside the building, a further disruption to our well-worn social fabric. Bulletproof glass will replace the office windows soon.

Everyone, across race, creed, and orientation, must respond to our call to action to alleviate poverty and reduce racial disparity in New Orleans. For our part, we will connect Positive Living and Pyramid Wellness to the Guste Community for mental health services to begin a process of healing. Our June presentations for African American Women: Breaking Silence to Heal Ourselves and Our Communities are under preparation as I speak. We will continue to provide food banking, fresh markets, SNAP, Medicaid, Medicare enrollment and racial healing story circles to low-income families in New Orleans.

Chanel Lafarge of George’s Produce delivered and we sold watermelons, bananas, oranges and strawberries to the residents today.